We investigate parts supply from one supplier to a manufacturer who operates a very variable final assembly schedule with kanbans for parts supply to the production line from suppliers. The information flow includes kanbans for resupplying the line from the factory store and restocking the factory store from the supplier, one week ahead forecasts of parts requirements, 8-week ahead requirements and updates orders supplied weekly, and a six month MRP schedule supplied fortnightly. The supplier uses these to schedule raw material preparation, initial assembly on a bottleneck machine, and finishing. This is challenging given the conflicts between the pieces of information. We investigate ways to improve total system performance, particularly inventory levels and easier production scheduling of critical machines, given the delays and structure of the system, using system dynamics models built in ithink! Kanban numbers can be reduced without risking production interruptions. The one week ahead forecasts offer little useful information to the supplier. Shifting to a simpler scheduling mechanism for the initial assembly is helpful. We have investigated two processes in the manufacturing logistics system, parts flow internal to the manufacturer and to the supplier, and the linkage between parts usage by the manufacturer and parts production by supplier. They can be simplified and improved, reducing inventory holding and hence cost, without compromising the overall responsiveness of the manufacturer which is a distinctive competitive characteristic. Simplified information flow processes allow for easier, better operation of total system.

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Date created

• 1994

Type

• Document

Processing Activity

• Processing documentation available at: https://wiki.albany.edu/display/SCA/Processing+Ingested+Digital+Files

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• Creative Commons BY-NC-ND Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International

  
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ITEM CONTEXT

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fe35db792b573af835d96e6eba4759cd

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Part of

c060552994c1527f70693734935660f1

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Part of

23d738ba88f8333bc39725f9cb5bd0b8

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Collection

System Dynamic Society Records

Scope and Contents

Collecting area

• This collection is part of the University Archives